Category Archives: video game

Some new stuff!

  1. I’ve got a new game for you about cavemen; it’s called Reference and Representation: And Approach to First-Order Semantics.
  2. I’ve got ANOTHER new game for you about a docent; it’s called An Evening at the Ransom Woodingdean Museum House.
  3. The above games were supported by nice people via Patreon.
  4. If you haven’t checked out Clash of the Type-Ins recently, you may have missed various new episodes featuring such luminous guests as Dan Schmidt, Jason McIntosh, and Andrew Plotkin.

What have you been up to, Ryan?

Plenty!

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If you are eager to know what I’m up to at any given moment then your best shot is to follow me on Twitter. Thank you for your interest!

Westerado: Double Barreled: Additional Title

I was lucky enough to get in on an advance version of Westerado: Double Barreled, a remake by Ostrich Banditos of their Adult Swim browser game Westerado. I wrote all about Westerado a while back, and I have plenty to say about the differences between the remake and the original—and what the differences mean to me as a game designer, and what they mean to me in terms of game genre theory—but let’s get the most superficial facts out of the way and work from there.

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Clashin’ and Typin’ with Emily Short

Only recently have I gotten around to editing and uploading a few episodes of CLASH of the TYPE-INS that Jenni and I recorded with Emily Short way back in September or something. Now they are all up, though. The episode where we play Bronze was crazy good, in my opinion: Some IF design-theoretical issues got brought up and Emily expounded on them with a cogency that Jenni’s and my antics often lack. If you listen to only one episode of our dumb podcast this year, make it Episode 10.

But you should listen to all of them! Why not?

Someone Keeps Moving My Chair

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I have a new game! It’s a prequel to The Statue Got Me High. My intent was to make a little sub-game that would briefly explore one of the characters from Statue, but this game is actually about 153% the size of that one.

I think you can play them in either order, but whatever or however you play, I hope you have a  good time, and if you have anything to say about them I hope you’ll let me know!

 

My Wii Fit Trainer amiibo mod

Addendum, 3 September 2015: I did this project with a Wii Fit Trainer from the first amiibo run. I am led to understand that the reprints are better-constructed, and in particular the foot and the cast are glued much more securely to the stand. People who have executed this mod with the reprints have had to “club it straight off and mighty glue it,” albeit with gorgeous results. It’s still very much possible to execute this mod with your newer WFT amiibo, but you probably won’t have as easy a time as I did.
conceptThis is what the Wii Fit Trainer amiibo was supposed to look like.

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The Dark vs. Ghost Question: A Rope of Sand

This was a post on Google+, but it ended up being so long that I’ve convinced myself it belongs here too. It is an analysis of Pokémon types.

I was wondering what the philosophical distinction between Ghost and Dark Pokémon was, and my friend Zach said that Dark is evil, while Ghosts are dead. This sounded good at first, but as we thought about it it seemed overly simplistic. For one thing, it’s not totally clear that Ghost Pokémon are straight-up dead Pokémon. Maybe the better word for Ghost Pokémon is “spooky”?

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The Ascent of the Gothic Tower!

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When Simon Carless commissioned The Ascent of the Gothic Tower for the video games-themed StoryBundle from earlier this year, we agreed the game should be released on a non-commercial basis at some future time, and further we agreed that future time should be September. Friends, it is September right now!

You can now play Gothic Tower online or download the story file to play in a different interpreter if you insist. In either case I hope you’ll let me know what you think of it!